


a forfeit of stars

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Post-Episode: s05e10 Past Life, Pre-Season/Series 01, oneshot with additions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 21:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13579488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Will has a big decision to make.





	1. a forfeit of stars

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on tumblr prompted "things you always meant to say but never got the chance" and that was too sad for an already sad ship so I made it fluffy. I'm sure you'll all live.

Will’s in that place where his brain is going and going and gone, a million, billion, trillion miles away. Literally, given the nature of this thoughts. And he feels bad about it, he does. It’s not like tonight’s anything special—just takeout Jem picked up after work and a cozy dinner for two while the radio he forgot about drones lazily from the next room—but still, it’s dinner with his girlfriend, he should be paying attention to what she’s saying.

And it’s Jem so of course she realizes and after a few minutes of thoughts about stars and strategies, the words _took off all my clothes right there_ penetrate his brain.

His fork clatters to his plate, sending up a splatter of szechuan sauce that catches him in the chin. He doesn’t move to wipe it off.

“What?” he grunts, his mind taking a hard right into completely different territory.

“You weren’t paying attention, were you?” There’s laughter in her voice, so that’s a good sign.

“Nope, sorry.” He gives an appropriately sheepish shrug of his shoulders. “Did you really take your clothes off?”

“Now you’ll never know.”

Damn.

He’s pretty sure she _didn’t_ unless the topic of conversation changed drastically while he was off in outer space, but he’s also pretty sure he heard her mention her lab partner when he first started drifting. That guy and Jemma’s naked body are two things that should never go together.

“What were you thinking about?” she asks.

Now he’s gotta struggle not to look guilty. Not that he’s done anything wrong, he just… It’s complicated. “Commitments,” he says, sidestepping specifics by detouring into the bigger picture. “Long term ones.”

“Oh.”

Actually, now that they’re on the topic, he could do with some advice. “Have you ever had to make a decision that would impact the rest of your life?” He chuckles before she can answer. “What am I saying? You up and moved halfway around the world for a job, of course you know what that kind of decision’s like.”

“True,” she says, “but…”

She smiles one of those private little grins she gets sometimes. If he’d known right out of the gate just how smart she is—how much smart _er_ than him she is—he might’ve resented them, but he’d already put them down in the Reasons Jem’s Adorable column by the time he found out. And anyway, he doesn’t think they’re mean-spirited. She’s got her secrets same as any woman does; half the fun is drawing them out of her.

“What?” He’s just gotta know.

She tips her head from side to side like there’s a tennis match going on in her brain, deciding whether or not to tell him. “I was thinking more along the lines of my engagement.”

“What?” If he was still holding his fork, he’d get another face full of sauce. “You were engaged?”

She nods. “Oh yes. Technically I suppose I still was the night we met,” she says—and it could be his imagination but he thinks there’s a little wistfulness there.

He’s honestly not sure how to take this news. The day he met Jem, caught her eye across a diner and felt like the air had all been sucked out of the room, is suddenly cast in a different light. He’d thought—it’s dumb, but he’d always thought it was a love at first sight kind of deal. But if she was in love with someone else, what does that say about them? Does it change them?

Her hand on his is the first sign he gets that his skin’s gone cold. “I said ‘technically,’” she reminds him gently. “I’d hoped he might follow me, drag me back home with him, but…” She shrugs and this time there’s no question, that’s hurt he sees in the movement.

“He was an idiot,” Will says, meaning it. Anyone who’d let her get away can’t be anything else.

A blush warms her cheeks. “It wasn’t his fault. There were circumstances…” She forces a smile. “But what sort of commitment were you thinking about?”

His mouth opens but words fail him. 

He looks to the window. It’s dark, the world outside painted pitch black by the warm glow in here with them, but he can imagine the sky. He remembers late nights out in the country with his dad, flat on his back in a field with a homemade telescope set up nearby, the universe turning overhead.

“Will?” There’s a faint tremor in her voice. He feels an answering one in his chest.

He can have the stars, the universe, all of it.

Or he can have her.

He pulls his attention back to her. To her fingers tight with worry around his. To that faint smile still on her beautiful face. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, he thought so from second one back in that diner. He was right about that other guy. Anyone who’d let Jem go is a fool. If Will ever meets him, he just might have to thank him for giving her up.

He twists his hand in hers, laces their fingers. “Will you marry me?”

He can feel her surprise in the twitch of her muscles, the flare of her pulse. “What?” she breathes. Then she catches herself. “Will, if this is because of what I said, I wasn’t trying to-”

“I was thinking about work,” he says honestly. “They offered me a big opportunity today. Huge. History books kinda deal. It means a year of prep at least. Long days, long nights, weekends a fond memory. And then the assignment itself would be another year on top of that. And I’d be gone for it. Completely.” He fills up his lungs, trying to find a way to explain it.

“Are you asking me to wait for you?”

He can’t get a read on her opinion of that. Her tone and her expression are both guarded.

“No,” he says. “I’m telling you I don’t want a life without you in it. No matter how great that job sounds on paper, I was thinking about it and I realized I don’t want it. I want to marry you and move into a house and start a family and I’m probably scaring you right now so if you could just answer me that’d be awesome.”

An invisible weight lifts off her shoulders. He realizes before she speaks that it must be a relief; that other guy put his life before their life together, she probably worried Will was about to do the same.

She slips out of her chair, moving around the table. He pushes his seat out while she comes, his hands catching her on instinct when she sits across his lap. “Then there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for quite some time.”

Even though he’s dying for an answer, he feels a smile pulling at his lips.

She wipes away the dried sauce. “I love you.”

“You said that yesterday,” he says, habit fueling the response. She always prefaces her I love you’s that way. He doesn’t know why, but it’s another of those things in the Adorable column.

She kisses his jaw where she’s just gotten the last of the sauce. “I know. And yes.”

His arms twitch around her. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’ll marry you and move into a house and start a family and-” Whatever she was going to add to his list, he swallows it up with a kiss.

Dinner goes cold beside them while they spend the rest of the night making out like love-struck teenagers.

 

 

\------

 

 

It’s late, the air gone cold the way it only does in the wee hours of the morning when the sun is farthest away. Jemma doesn’t mind the chill and besides, she has Will to keep her warm. She taps her fingers on his steadily rising and falling chest, watching the twist tie around her third finger quiver. It was the best Will could come up with given his impromptu proposal. He seemed a little too apologetic in his promises to get her something better and she makes a mental note to tell him she never had an engagement ring before to compare it too.

She didn’t mean to tell him about Fitz—not now and not ever—and while she does feel a little guilty at the thought it might have spurred him to propose—which was _not_ her intention—she can’t be sorry.

He’s safe.

She presses a kiss to his bare shoulder, focusing on the beat of his heart. It’s a gift, this heartbeat.

At first she thought it was her own bad luck with monoliths. Her late arrival to the monolith’s activation in the Lighthouse landed her in the wrong time period. Alone. It was an all too familiar scenario and just like before, she spent months struggling to find a way home. And while matters were made easier by her being on  _Earth_ this time around, she floundered in a past she’d originally spent locked up in academia.

Then one day, at the end of her rope and despairing of ever getting home, she saw Will. Alive. His handsome face lit up by stark sunlight cutting through windows. She very nearly cried right there in that diner.

And now he’s given up on the Distant Star mission. He’ll never set foot on Maveth, never spend fourteen years questioning his own sanity. Instead he’ll spend those years with her, building a life, a home, a family.

They’ve both lost their futures. And maybe the potential repercussions of that should terrify her, but come what may, she thinks this is a trade she’s happy to make.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click ahead to see a (very) brief snippet of what the future holds for Jemma and Will.


	2. some time later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very brief follow-up to the previous chapter, a glimpse into Jemma and Will's future together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "things you said in the backyard at night"

“What are you looking- oh!” She takes the porch steps blindly, a hand sliding along Mel’s shoulder blades as she passes her by to squeeze against Will’s opposite side. Mel doesn’t move at all—not uncommon given she’s a tween with a cell phone of her very own, but for once her eyes are glued to the sky.

“Dad says we’re too far south for aurora borealis,” says Chris. He’s balanced on the old jungle gym, his camera aimed at the bright clouds lighting up the night. “But what else could it be?”

“Maybe it’s aliens,” Mel says.

“Ha ha.”

Will’s arm tightens around Jemma, pulling her closer so he can rest his head on hers. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s an obvious question in his smile.

She can’t help but smile back. There was a time, years and years ago, when Will resented her travels through time. He took the truth of her origins with surprising equanimity, but the revelation that she’d known the Distant Star mission was doomed from the start and allowed those men to go to their deaths without a word, that he needed some time to accept. Time he spent alone, away from her. And though he came back, it was a long time before they could openly discuss her travels.

But Will’s made peace with it and never once since has he judged her for her decisions. He cannot, he says, know what it’s like to hold the future in his hands and doesn’t envy her the responsibility.

She pushes aside her marveling at the twists and turns in their relationship and does some quick calculations. The Chitauri invasion is coming, but it’s still months away and the two portals that will be opened surrounding that event were on opposite sides of the country. Assuming this _is_ a portal of some kind…

She holds Will tight, going up on her toes to whisper in his ear. “Thor.”

She can feel the shock roll through him. He hesitates, eyes flickering to Mel, who’s moved away to try stealing Chris’s camera. “Like the god?”

Jemma nods once. “Technically they _are_ aliens.”

Will laughs, a loud bark that echoes across the yard. The kids look at them for a moment but then, assuming it was adult silliness, go back to arguing over the camera.

Jemma considers stopping them but decides so long as no blood is being shed, they should be allowed to work it out for themselves. She’s content to watch the bifrost from a distance and enjoy the simple pleasure of being with her family.

 


End file.
